MySitesAlive User Guides

Comprehensive guides to help you get the most out of MySitesAlive's monitoring features.

Table of Contents

Getting Started

Create your account and set up your first website monitoring
Website Monitoring

How to add and manage website monitoring
SIP Server Monitoring

How to monitor your VoIP and SIP servers
Keyword Monitoring

How to set up and manage keyword presence monitoring
Setting Up Alerts

Configure email and SMS alerts for your monitors
Managing Tenants & Users

How to work with multiple organizations and users
Using the API

Getting started with our REST API

Getting Started

Creating Your Account

Before you can start monitoring websites, you'll need to create an account:

  1. Visit the registration page.
  2. Enter your username, email address, and a secure password.
  3. Provide your company name, which will be used to create your tenant.
  4. Click Register to create your account.

Once registered, you'll be automatically assigned as the administrator of your tenant.

What is a Tenant?

A tenant is an isolated workspace for your organization. Each tenant has its own monitored websites, users, and settings. As an administrator, you can invite other users to your tenant and assign them roles.

Navigating the Dashboard

After logging in, you'll be taken to your dashboard. Here's what you'll find:

  • Overview Panel: Shows a summary of your monitored websites, including those that are up, down, or have SSL certificate issues.
  • Recent Alerts: Displays the most recent notifications for your websites.
  • Quick Access Menu: The sidebar menu provides access to all main features, including:
    • Sites - Manage your monitored websites
    • Alerts - Configure notification settings
    • Public Dashboards - Create shareable status pages
    • API Docs - Access API documentation for automation

Website Monitoring

Adding a Website to Monitor

To start monitoring a website:

  1. Navigate to the Sites page using the sidebar menu.
  2. Click the Add Website button.
  3. In the form that appears, enter:
    • Name: A descriptive name for the website (e.g., "Company Homepage")
    • URL: The full URL including https:// (e.g., "https://www.example.com")
    • Check Interval: How frequently the site should be checked (in minutes)
    • Monitor Type: Select "Website (HTTP)"
  4. Click Add to begin monitoring.

Once added, the system will immediately perform an initial check of the website.

Automatic SSL Certificate Monitoring

When you add a website, MySitesAlive automatically monitors its SSL certificate status and expiration date. You'll be notified of certificates that are expiring soon or invalid.

Understanding Monitor Status

Each website in your monitoring list will show one of the following statuses:

  • Up: The website is responding normally.
  • Down: The website is not responding or returning error codes.
  • Pending: The initial check is in progress.

For SSL certificates, the following statuses are used:

  • Valid: The SSL certificate is valid and not expiring soon.
  • Expiring Soon: The SSL certificate will expire within 30 days.
  • Invalid: The SSL certificate is expired, not trusted, or invalid.

Managing Websites

From the Sites page, you can manage your websites using these options:

  • View Details: Click on a website name to see detailed monitoring history and performance.
  • Edit: Update the monitoring settings using the edit icon.
  • Delete: Remove a website from monitoring using the delete icon.

SIP Server Monitoring

Adding a SIP Server to Monitor

MySitesAlive can monitor SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) servers, which are commonly used for VoIP services:

  1. Navigate to the Sites page using the sidebar menu.
  2. Click the Add Website button.
  3. In the form that appears, enter:
    • Name: A descriptive name for the SIP server (e.g., "Office VoIP Server")
    • URL: The SIP URI including the protocol (e.g., "sip:sipserver.example.com:5060")
    • Check Interval: How frequently the server should be checked (in minutes)
    • Monitor Type: Select "SIP Server"
  4. Click Add to begin monitoring.
SIP URI Format

A SIP URI typically follows this format: sip:hostname:port. The default SIP port is 5060 for non-secure connections and 5061 for TLS-secured connections.

How SIP Monitoring Works

Our system monitors SIP servers by:

  • Sending SIP OPTIONS requests to check if the server is responding
  • Verifying the response codes to ensure the server is operational
  • Measuring response times to detect potential performance issues

SIP monitoring does not attempt to register or make calls, so it's a non-intrusive way to verify your telephony infrastructure.

Keyword Monitoring

Setting Up Keyword Monitoring

Keyword monitoring allows you to check if specific important words or phrases appear on your website:

  1. First, add a website for HTTP monitoring as described in the Website Monitoring section.
  2. Once the website is added, click on the website name to view its details.
  3. In the details page, find the Keyword Monitoring section.
  4. Click Edit Keywords to add the terms you want to monitor.
  5. Enter one keyword or phrase per line in the text area, then click Save.
Keyword Monitoring Best Practices

For reliable keyword monitoring:

  • Choose distinctive phrases that are unlikely to change with routine content updates
  • For legal disclaimers or compliance text, use a short but unique snippet
  • Consider monitoring your company name, copyright notices, or important product names

Understanding Keyword Status

The keyword monitoring status will be displayed as:

  • Found: All specified keywords were found on the website.
  • Missing: One or more keywords are missing from the website.
  • Pending: The initial keyword check is in progress.

Common Use Cases

Keyword monitoring is particularly valuable for:

  • Compliance Monitoring: Ensure required legal disclaimers, privacy notices, or terms of service remain on your site.
  • Brand Protection: Verify your trademark, company name, or key products are properly displayed.
  • Content Integrity: Detect when important content is accidentally removed during website updates.
  • SEO Monitoring: Ensure critical keywords for search engine optimization remain in place.

Setting Up Alerts

Creating Alert Rules

MySitesAlive can notify you when issues are detected with your websites or servers:

  1. Navigate to the Alerts page using the sidebar menu.
  2. Click the Add Alert button.
  3. In the form that appears, configure:
    • Website: Select the website or SIP server to monitor
    • Alert Type: Choose from:
      • Downtime - Notify when the site is down
      • SSL Expiry - Notify when SSL certificate is expiring soon
      • Keyword Missing - Notify when monitored keywords are not found
    • Threshold: For downtime, how many minutes before alerting; for SSL expiry, how many days before expiration to alert
    • Notification Method: Choose Email, SMS, or Both
    • Email Address: Where to send email notifications
    • Phone Number: Where to send SMS notifications (if selected)
  4. Click Add Alert to save the configuration.
SMS Alert Bundles

SMS alerts require purchasing an SMS bundle. You can add an SMS bundle to your account from the pricing page. Each bundle provides 600 SMS alerts.

Managing Alerts

From the Alerts page, you can:

  • View Alert History: See a record of past notifications sent for each alert.
  • Edit Alert Settings: Modify thresholds, notification methods, or recipients.
  • Delete Alerts: Remove alert rules you no longer need.
  • Test Alerts: Use the "Test Alerts" page to send a test notification without waiting for an actual issue.

Notification Content

Alert notifications include:

  • The name and URL of the affected website
  • The type of issue detected (downtime, SSL expiry, or missing keyword)
  • When the issue was first detected
  • For downtime alerts, the HTTP status code or error message
  • For SSL alerts, the certificate expiration date
  • For keyword alerts, which keywords were not found

Managing Tenants & Users

Tenant Management

As a tenant administrator, you can customize your tenant settings:

  1. Click the Tenant dropdown in the sidebar, then select Settings.
  2. Here you can:
    • Update Tenant Name: Change the display name of your organization.
    • Upload Logo: Add your company logo for branding purposes.
    • Configure Email Settings: Set up SMTP settings for email notifications.
    • Configure SMS Settings: Set up SMS provider settings.

User Management

You can invite other users to access your tenant with different permission levels:

  1. Click the Tenant dropdown, then select User Management.
  2. Click Add User to invite a new user.
  3. Enter the user's email address and select their role:
    • Admin: Full access to all tenant settings and monitoring features.
    • Editor: Can add/edit websites and alerts, but cannot modify tenant settings.
    • Viewer: Read-only access to view monitoring status and alerts.
User Access Best Practices

Follow the principle of least privilege when assigning roles. Only give users the level of access they need for their responsibilities. Regularly review user access and remove accounts for individuals who no longer need access.

Managing Multiple Tenants

If you belong to multiple tenants (organizations), you can easily switch between them:

  1. Click the Tenant dropdown, then select Manage Tenants.
  2. You'll see a list of all tenants you have access to.
  3. Click Switch next to the tenant you want to access.
  4. Your current tenant will be displayed in the user dropdown at the top right of the screen.

Using the API

Getting Started with the API

MySitesAlive offers a REST API that allows you to integrate monitoring data into your own applications:

  1. Navigate to the API Docs page using the sidebar menu.
  2. Generate an API key by clicking the Generate API Key button.
  3. Copy and securely store your API key - it will be required for all API requests.
API Key Security

Your API key provides access to your monitoring data. Keep it secure and never expose it in client-side code. If you suspect your key has been compromised, immediately regenerate it from the API Docs page.

Available API Endpoints

The API documentation page provides detailed information about all available endpoints, including:

  • GET /api/v1/websites - List all monitored websites
  • GET /api/v1/websites/{id} - Get details for a specific website
  • GET /api/v1/websites/{id}/alerts - List alerts for a specific website
  • GET /api/v1/websites/{id}/notifications - Get recent notifications for a website

Each endpoint is documented with example requests, required parameters, and response formats.

Authentication

To authenticate API requests, include your API key in the request header:

X-API-Key: your_api_key_here

API Usage Example

Here's an example of how to get a list of your monitored websites using cURL:

curl -H "X-API-Key: your_api_key_here" https://api.mysitesalive.com/v1/websites

For complete documentation and more examples, refer to the API Documentation page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Check frequency depends on your subscription plan:

  • Standard Plan: Every 5 minutes
  • Enhanced Plan: Every 2 minutes
  • Professional Plan: Every 1 minute

You can also customize the check interval for individual websites within the limits of your plan.

MySitesAlive can only monitor websites and services that are publicly accessible from the internet. To monitor internal services, you would need to:

  • Configure appropriate firewall rules to allow our monitoring IPs
  • Set up a reverse proxy to expose the internal services securely
  • Or consider our on-premise agent solution (contact support for details)

SMS alerts are sold in bundles of 600 messages for £50. You can purchase multiple bundles if needed. Email alerts are unlimited and included with all plans at no additional cost.

MySitesAlive checks your websites from multiple global locations to provide accurate uptime data. Our monitoring nodes are distributed across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. This ensures that we can detect if a website is only down in specific regions.